Wint, Natalie;
Lazar, Irina;
(2024)
Transdisciplinary Engineering Education: The Student Perspective.
In: Cooper, Adam and Trigos, Federico and Stjepandić, Josip and Curran, Richard and Lazar, Irina, (eds.)
Engineering For Social Change: Proceedings of the 31st ISTE International Conference on Transdisciplinary Engineering, London, United Kingdom, 9-11 July 2024.
(pp. pp. 709-718).
IOS Press: Amsterdam, Netherlands.
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Abstract
Engineering problems are becoming increasingly complex, ill-defined, and socially relevant, and thus require us to combine insights and methods from different disciplinary fields, and to seek input from non-engineers, including communities and public organisations. If graduates are to be successful in working towards such problems, they need to develop meta-disciplinary skills, attitudes and understanding, and learn how to talk critically across disciplinary perspectives. Teaching the required competencies explicitly is essential because students are unlikely to have learnt them previously, primarily because of the focus on disciplinary teaching within most education systems. Supporting the evolution of engineering practice and emergence of transdisciplinary engineering therefore necessitates a change in teaching and learning methods. One approach to this has been the emergence of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary programmes primarily at postgraduate, but increasingly at an undergraduate level. Such degree schemes are relatively understudied due to their recent emergence. This paper reports the findings from the first part of a longitudinal study into the lived experiences of students studying on a transdisciplinary undergraduate programme and focuses on expectations and motivations of incoming students. Data was obtained from semi-structured interviews with first year students. A summary of the perceived benefits of studying such courses, as well as the associated challenges, is provided. The paper ends with recommendations in terms of fostering transdisciplinary approaches to engineering education.
| Type: | Proceedings paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | Transdisciplinary Engineering Education: The Student Perspective |
| Event: | 31st ISTE International Conference on Transdisciplinary Engineering |
| ISBN-13: | 978-1-64368-550-2 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3233/ATDE240922 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.3233/ATDE240922 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2024 The Authors. This paper is published online with Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0). |
| Keywords: | Education and training, transdisciplinary, engineering education, transdisciplinary skills and competencies, student perception |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > STEaPP |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10201414 |
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